In Accra, a meeting was organized to discuss the implementation of China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) concept in West Africa.
The Ghanaian poverty reduction program developed by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) based on Chinese techniques was examined.
Ministers of State, Members of Parliament, academics, CSOs, as well as several foreign professors from China and the West African region, among others, attended the conference, which was organized by the IEA in partnership with the Chinese Embassy.
Prof. Aaron Mike Oquaye, a former speaker of parliament, applauded China for having an enormous impact on global poverty.
He asserted that without being able to feed its people, a nation cannot properly flourish. He also urged people to buy locally manufactured goods to help fight poverty.
Dan Botwe, the minister of local government and rural development, also stated that if the government architecture complied with the guiding principles of governmental policy as outlined in the 1992 Constitution, poverty might decrease in the nation.
To hasten the nation’s development, he added, efforts must be taken to further the decentralization process. “We may conclude that poverty has been eased when the people’s living situations improve,” he stated.
The Chinese approach
Lu Kun, the Chinese ambassador to Ghana, claimed that his nation’s strategy to end poverty consisted of six parts. These included identifying the poor, setting up programs to address specific forms of poverty, effectively using capital, and implementing strategies to target specific households.
Yang Qin, the president of the Ghana Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce, and Samuel Manu, the head of survey at the International Energy Agency, were among the other speakers at the event.
While most developing nations are still having difficulty achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) One, China has adopted the TPA model, which gives people the tools they need to make themselves financially independent.
China eliminated extreme poverty in 2020, ten years before the 2030 SDG deadline. Since the late 1970s, focused poverty alleviation efforts in China have helped more than 800 million people escape extreme poverty, representing the largest drop in inequality in modern times.
The Nsawam Adoagyir Municipality and the Accra Metropolitan Region are the two districts in the nation where the IEA is introducing the TPA.